ANTI-CAPITALISM IS NOT A METAPHOR

“How many of you support capitalism?” a student comedian asked the crowd at a recent Tufts Stand-Up Comedy Collective show. There were a few scattered yells, but the audience was largely silent. Here at Tufts, most students are proud anti-capitalists and jump at the opportunity to bring up Marx both in class and at house parties. They’ll drop words like “praxis” and “bourgeoisie”—before pivoting to how they “summered” in southern France or lost their favorite Canada Goose jacket at a frat party. Tufts students’ supposed ideologies are far to the left of the neoliberal Massachusetts norm, but many of those who embrace communist rhetoric also belong to society’s most powerful economic classes. For middle- and upper-class white people, ideology is meaningless unless it’s enacted with consistent, uncomfortable, and tangible anti-capitalist actions.

Last year in my Introduction to Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora course, our very first assigned reading was “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor” by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. The piece tackles the fact that the language of decolonization is often used by institutions that do not do decolonial work and, in fact, actively perpetuate colonialism as predominantly white institutions on stolen Indigenous land. As much as universities, institutions, and individuals speak about the importance of decolonization, their actions often tell a different story. Tuck and Yang call this a “settler move to innocence,” a way to alleviate guilt while still maintaining oppressive institutional power. Tufts, for instance, claims to have a mission to become an anti-racist institution, yet it exists on the former slave-holding plantation Ten Hills Farm; occupies Massachusett, Nipmuc, and Wompanoag land; perpetuates gentrification in Boston’s Chinatown; and has an extraordinarily long history of discrimination against Black, Indigenous, and FirstGeneration and Low-Income students, making the administration’s words a direct contradiction to their actions.

Tuck and Yang’s reading stayed with me long after that class. It pushed me to think further about the difference between words and actions, and the tension that exists in the space between what we say and what we do. I’ve always believed in the power of language, but just as words can affirm, uplift, and bring justice, they can also obfuscate the truth, distort facts, and hide a malicious, harmful reality.

I firmly believe that anti-capitalism is the only moral economic view to have. The US’ form of extractive capitalism, which benefits only the wealthy and violently subdues the working class, is fundamentally indefensible. A system that props up a rich, mostly white elite while others struggle to find food, healthcare, security, and shelter is not any kind of system that I want to live in. I also see privilege and class as systems that are inherently intersectional, especially with race, but also with gender, sexuality, ability, and every other complex identity.

However, I no longer believe that holding even the strongest anti-capitalist beliefs is enough.

Acknowledging wealth, privilege, and unequal amounts of power relative to others can be awkward, shameful, and comes without any clear guidelines or rules. It’s easy to claim powerlessness, come up with justifications not to act, or refuse to acknowledge a reality where you have the ability to choose. It’s true for race and anti-racism, for settlers grappling with decolonization, and it’s true for class, too.

It’s extraordinarily easy to label yourself an anti-capitalist, socialist, communist, or Marxist at a university where the majority of students share those ideas. But radical opposition to capitalism, by definition, should not be easy for the wealthy. And it shouldn’t be comfortable, either materially or immaterially.

Leftist circles don’t usually focus on personal responsibility for injustice, instead casting blame on greedy billionaires, ruthless corporations, and our irreparably broken systems of economics, policing, education, housing, and more. I don’t disagree with any of that; it makes sense that we’ve pushed back against a narrative that tells us that the climate crisis is caused by forgetting to recycle or that debt is a moral failure instead of a societal one. But only criticizing systems can also be a way out of personal accountability. Unjust systems are upheld by people who are complicit in them, and the people who are the most complicit in US capitalism are the white and wealthy.

For the rich and privileged, anti-capitalist ideology calls for something more than words and thoughts. It demands that the wealthy become class traitors and asks that they refuse to be complicit in a system that benefits them. To be against capitalism as a person with wealth is to recognize that your material comfort stems from historical systems of oppression and continues at a direct cost of human suffering—anti-capitalism means choosing to reject this privilege in favor of justice, making sacrifices in the process. It’s not comfortable, but it is necessary.

Of course, not everyone can afford to redistribute wealth, and many students at Tufts do not have generational wealth in the first place. FGLI students do not need to do anything to prove their commitment to anti-capitalism. However, the truth is that most of our peers align more closely with the owning class than with the working class: in a 2017 New York Times Upshot study of 2,395 colleges throughout the country, Tufts was found to be the tenth most inequitable.

More students at this school come from the top one percent than the bottom 60 percent, an absurd but believable statistic found by the study. That breaks down to 18.6 percent of students who come from families in the top one percent, as opposed to just 11.8 percent of students who are from families in the bottom 60 percent. The average parental income of Tufts students is $224,800, an amount that’s far above the US median household income average of $68,703 in 2019. The collective wealth possessed by the student body is enormous. This means that if we’re going to talk about anti-capitalism, there has to be real action to back it up beyond tweets, discussion sections, and book clubs.

Otherwise, it’s simply an elaborate farce comparable to the “settler moves to innocence” that Tuck and Yang describe, serving only to make wealthy people feel better about themselves while helping absolutely no one.

Here are some things that are easy: calling yourself a socialist in your political science seminar. Reposting an infographic on your Instagram story. Asking other people to redistribute wealth—which I recognize is what I’m doing here. Here are some things that are hard: redistributing more money than you’re comfortable with to a mutual aid fund on a monthly basis. Joining a radical anti-capitalist, anti-racist, or abolitionist organization and committing to it, even without recognition. Showing up when you’re asked to show up, not just when it’s convenient, and doing the hard, unglamorous work. Listening to BIPOC and FGLI peers when they talk about their experiences, and centering them instead of yourself. Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone to do a little bit more, instead of agonizing endlessly over whether or not the specific amount of privilege you have necessitates the moral obligation to. Making a sacrifice, even if it’s a small one.

These “difficult” steps are the only ones that will improve the material conditions of the working class, the goal of anti-capitalism—as a leftist, if you’re not doing that but could, then what are you even doing? Anti-capitalism is not a metaphor, and neither are decolonization or anti-racism. Ideologies aren’t supposed to be theories in a vacuum; they’re blueprints designed to be put into practice. When you incorporate even small revolutionary actions into your everyday life, ideology ceases to be an empty metaphor and starts to become reality. That’s praxis.

This is not a judgment of who you are or what you have. That’s something only you can know. But if you’re reading this as somebody with access to generational wealth or disposable income, especially if you’re white, I’m asking you to join me in going a step further to interrogate our personal choices, the impact that we have on our community, and the ability we have to change that impact for the better. If you truly support anti-capitalism, then you must support a transition to a just economic system, and that system cannot exist without sacrifices from all who currently possess any amount of wealth. That includes me—and statistically, that probably includes you, too.

To redistribute wealth to local community members right now, send money to Mutual Aid Medford and Somerville at mutualaidmamas.com.